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More HIV testing urged for gay men in Long Beach

A super magnified view of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus or HIV. The virus is coated in host cell membrane, which is drawn as a bluish green semi transparent layer where various membrane proteins are floating. The viral knobs on the cell virus’s surface allow it to attach to uninfected cells and infect them.

LONG BEACH – With about one in five sexually active people nationally who studies say are HIV positive and don’t know it, Long Beach officials say more needs to be done to get people, especially gay men, tested.

The overwhelming number of HIV cases in the Long Beach area are gay men, and some men don’t know their status for a variety of reasons, said Michael Buitron, outreach specialist with the CARE Program at St. Mary Medical Center. The program is the area’s largest and most comprehensive HIV and AIDS treatment program.

“We need more gay-friendly health care providers and more access to health care, more access to mental health, more access to testing,” Buitron said. “If you’re a gay man without insurance or a gay man with insurance but you have a doctor who squirms when you mention your sexuality, you’re out of luck. You probably won’t get tested.”

For 2011, the last year complete data is available, 157 new HIV infections and 46 AIDS diagnoses were reported in Long Beach, compared with 127 new HIV infections and 46 new AIDS diagnoses in 2010, according to health department data.

For 2012, which the health department is still collecting data, 137 new HIV cases and 53 AIDS diagnoses have been reported.

Of those people infected, 87 percent were men and 74 percent of them contracted the virus through male-to-male sexual contact.

“I’m still concerned that with all our information and prevention activities and all these years getting the word out, the numbers are still fairly high,” Kushner said. “That’s the problem. They’re plateaued. They’re not decreasing.”

Buitron, however, said the data don’t tell the whole picture.

“Why have they plateaued? Is it a lack of people getting tested or a lack of people getting infected?”

An alarming number of the new HIV infections are in African American and Latino men 20 to 29 years old.

“Youth are on the upswing because they are sexually active in a world with more HIV,” Buitron said. “They’re playing in a much riskier field.”

Daniel Batalla, an HIV counselor at the Long Beach LGBTQ Center, said young people are getting a lot of misinformation about HIV.

“I have some clients who think you can get it from kissing or from using a glass that has been used by someone HIV positive,” he said. “They are more concerned about the stigma of being positive than getting infected. I’ve heard some clients compare HIV and AIDS to diabetes.”

“The young people who are getting infected didn’t live through the experiences of the early years of the epidemic in the 1980s when people were dying quickly and good medications weren’t available,” Kushner said. “They see it as a manageable disease with medication and therapy. But those medications have prolonged side effects and are expensive.

“We need to target young people better with our prevention messages,” Kushner said. “For example, have the groups with young people meet with older patients who are positive who can educate them about the history of HIV and AIDS.”

In Long Beach, 6,225 AIDS cases have been reported since the first case in 1983, according to the statistics ending in December 2012 from the health department.

The city officially started recording cases in 2006, after a state law was passed requiring health care providers and laboratories to report HIV infections to local health departments.